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Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Happy Birthday, Burning Crusade!
Today is the first birthday of the Burning Crusade expansion of World of Warcraft. The most noticeable thing about this event is the missing expected guest at the birthday party: Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion. Blizzard clearly failed their declared goal of one expansion per year. WotLK doesn't even appear to be anywhere close, the best guess for it's release is November 2008, 4 years after the release of World of Warcraft, and thus bringing the average to one expansion every two years. Blizzard is famous for being obsessed with quality, which is a good thing. But I can't believe they couldn't have used some of their $500 million profit to hire a bunch more people and get expansions out faster. As a WoW expansion is like printing money, a guaranteed 10 million box sales, I'm sure there is a strong business case for producing expansions faster. And the players would certainly like it.
The Burning Crusade turned out to be better than I originally thought. Nevertheless I do stand to my statement from last year that while TBC is nice enough, it doesn't offer sufficient content to occupy everyone until the next expansion. But lets have a look at what the Burning Crusade offered us over the last 12 months.
Of course on release a large number of people were mostly interested in leveling up their characters to 70. Leveling up from 60 to 70 was fun: the quests were of somewhat higher quality than those in the old world, and the loot and quest rewards were much, much better. Only point of criticism on the leveling game is low replayability: Every single level 60 character, Horde or Alliance, goes through the nearly the same quests in the same Hellfire Peninsula zone. Blizzard realized that flaw, and Wrath of the Lich King will have multiple entry zones.
At level 70 the endgame of the Burning Crusade turned out to be in many respects better than the level 60 endgame. The reputation grinds were less grindy (unless you hate instances). The number of possible 5-man instances to go to was larger. And if those 5-man instances got too easy for you, you could always visit them in heroic mode for better rewards. Subsequent patches added daily quests, which made farming money feel less like a treadmill and more fun. Crafting at level 70 was more useful than at level 60, but that turned out to be a mixed blessing: Yes, you now could craft really nice epics which weren't totally useless compared to the other loot available, and that was good. But the downside of that was that you obviously can't give out epics too easily, so getting them involves a lot of farming primals, which gets boring rather fast.
The Burning Crusade raid endgame wasn't such a big success, at least not from the point of view of the majority of players. Reducing the size of the entry level raid dungeon from 40 to 10 players didn't achieve it's stated goal of making raiding more accessible. It turned out that in an average guild a 40 man Molten Core raid contained a mix of more dedicated and less dedicated players. There was a certain amount of room for "slackers", not everybody had to be at the top of their game all of the time. While that was a bit annoying for those who did most of the work in a raid, overall the system was good for the social cohesion of a guild. There was a possibility to take less experienced people on a raid and teach them the basics of raiding on the go. The entry level raid of the Burning Crusade doesn't have room for slackers, as there are only 10 people in the raid. There is less opportunity to take friends, or to train newer players. As an added problem the higher level raids after Karazhan required 25 players. Many guilds had one A team breezing through Karazhan after a while, and a B team that was still struggling. So when the A team wanted to move on, they found that they were lacking 15 people for the next raid dungeon. Some guilds managed to organize their Karazhan raid groups better, having two or more groups of equal strength instead of an A and B team. But in many other guilds the A team left to join another guild's A team to have enough players for the following content. The system was responsible for a large amount of guild drama and reshuffling. Fortunately that sorted itself out after a couple of months, and the introduction of another 10-man raid dungeon, Zul'Aman, helped too.
But if you were to log on tonight an count the percentage of players in raid dungeons, you'd notice that there are less people raiding nowadays than in the level 60 endgame. PvE raiding is now relatively less popular, for the simple reason that PvP has become more popular. This is a simple result of PvP mudflation: Arena seasons are much shorter than the time between two expansion in WoW. And every new arena season introduces even better rewards. And to make sure that new players can keep up with people in season 3 arena gear, season 1 arena gear has been made available for honor points, and is relatively easy to achieve. While Blizzard shouldn't have allowed Tigole to belittle them as "welfare epics", fact is that it is now easier to get a nice set of epics from PvP than from PvE raiding. That confirmed a widespread suspicion that some people were just raiding for the phat loot, because now these people aren't raiding any more, they are doing PvP.
PvP being relatively more popular isn't necessarily a bad thing (even if on underpopulated servers it makes it hard to find PvE groups). After all the Warcraft background is one that would presume a lot more PvP to take place. And as a defensive move against a wave of upcoming PvP-centric games, making PvP more popular in WoW is certainly a clever idea. Unfortunately if the people doing the PvP are only there for the phat loot, you can expect a certain amount of exploiting going on, and PvP is less safe against exploiting than PvE is. There are people doing AFK honor farming in battlegrounds, people buying themselves a spot in top arena teams, win trading (also called "smurfing"). So while now more people are doing PvP, the players who actually enjoy PvP for PvP's sake are less happy now, because the exploiters spoil their fun. Blizzard is well aware of the problem, but their first attempts to stop AFK honor farming haven't been very successful, and they have to come up with new ways to stop PvP exploiting.
The Burning Crusade didn't add new classes to the game, but it added one new race per faction, and via this new race made the classes that were previously restricted to one faction available to the other. So now there are bloodelf paladins for the Horde and draenei shamans for the Alliance. With the new races came new newbie zones up to level 20. And patch 2.3 added new quests in the level 35 to 40 range, where previously there weren't enough of them. Also leveling from level 20 to 60 has been sped up with the patch. All this lead to many people leveling alts nowadays.
So all in all the Burning Crusade has reason to celebrate on its first birthday. Things didn't go flawless, but well enough. Subscriber numbers went up when TBC was released, then went down a few months later, but went slightly up again after the summer and are pretty much stable now. This was helped by a lack of serious contenders in 2007. The coming months risk being harder for World of Warcraft: if Warhammer Online is released well before Wrath of the Lich King, the combination of not much new happening in the old game and the promises of a new game could lead to a noticeable migration towards WAR. Evil tongues say that the relative release dates of WAR and WotLK are of such importance that neither side dares to announce a fix release date. Images of Wild West gunfighters staring at each other at high noon in the main street of Tombstone for hours without moving come to mind, waiting for the other to draw first. Let's hope that under these conditions Wrath of the Lich King makes it before the Burning Crusade's second birthday.
- posted by Tobold @ 7:57 AM Permanent Link
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I suspect that Blizzard counts the "one expansion per year" thing as still being correct if they release within this calendar year. It would be a bad excuse though.
It somehow wouldn't surprise me if Blizzard went 'we've gone gold, WotLK will be in stores in 4 weeks', with no warning. That'd screw up WAR's jockeying for position, as LK is garaunteed to sell, and reacting to it would require WAR being gold well before LK is.
Tobold, I'm not sure what your profession is, but it doesn't appear that you are a programmer or game developer. No offense intended.
You may want to read "The Mythical Man Month", which is a book that teaches several valuable lessons for computer project development. Basically, you cannot advance the pace of development beyond the skill of your core programming/development staff. Another way of saying this is the frequently heard mantra in IT that "Adding more programmers to a delayed project only serves to further delay it."
Even with virtually unlimited funds available for headhunting purposes, this rule of thumb is known to hold in all cases. Also see Windows Vista for details on delayed projects.
In some special cases it *is* possible to speed up development, say in making textual and graphical content, but only up to the point where you can find skilled employees. Just picking off random people from the local job ad market obviously won't work for a world class project.
Core parts of any IT project, meaning actual programming, simply doesn't scale with more heads. Above a certain headcount you are only likely to gain in confusion and further delays by adding more staff.
I am willing to take my words back if anyone can mention just a single case, where this didn't hold. I, with 25 years in programming behind me, am not aware of any.
Xyzzy.
You may want to read "The Mythical Man Month", which is a book that teaches several valuable lessons for computer project development. Basically, you cannot advance the pace of development beyond the skill of your core programming/development staff. Another way of saying this is the frequently heard mantra in IT that "Adding more programmers to a delayed project only serves to further delay it."
Even with virtually unlimited funds available for headhunting purposes, this rule of thumb is known to hold in all cases. Also see Windows Vista for details on delayed projects.
In some special cases it *is* possible to speed up development, say in making textual and graphical content, but only up to the point where you can find skilled employees. Just picking off random people from the local job ad market obviously won't work for a world class project.
Core parts of any IT project, meaning actual programming, simply doesn't scale with more heads. Above a certain headcount you are only likely to gain in confusion and further delays by adding more staff.
I am willing to take my words back if anyone can mention just a single case, where this didn't hold. I, with 25 years in programming behind me, am not aware of any.
Xyzzy.
# posted by 
: 16/1/08 12:33
: 16/1/08 12:33
I don't think the mythical man month argument really applies here, however universal it is. Just because it holds true in all projects, doesn't mean it's the principal cause of delay in all projects, either :)
While the core of many software applications is often irreducibly complex such that can't split up amongst multiple programmers, and therefore is going to take as long as your best single coder or small team takes to do it, the slow expansion is slow for, I think, other reasons. The argument would apply to writing the rendering engine, or the networking layer, or something that can't be easily separated and split amongst multiple people or teams. But these sorts of systems are in place and have been for a long time. This is a content production problem.
This is not enough designers, or insufficient tools so that existing designers are not productive enough, combined with a very high quality benchmark that necessitates lots of QA and lots of redesign, I imagine.
I seriously doubt they are reworking any of the main software systems to the extent that this argument applies. It's a process or manpower issue, IMO.
While the core of many software applications is often irreducibly complex such that can't split up amongst multiple programmers, and therefore is going to take as long as your best single coder or small team takes to do it, the slow expansion is slow for, I think, other reasons. The argument would apply to writing the rendering engine, or the networking layer, or something that can't be easily separated and split amongst multiple people or teams. But these sorts of systems are in place and have been for a long time. This is a content production problem.
This is not enough designers, or insufficient tools so that existing designers are not productive enough, combined with a very high quality benchmark that necessitates lots of QA and lots of redesign, I imagine.
I seriously doubt they are reworking any of the main software systems to the extent that this argument applies. It's a process or manpower issue, IMO.
I don't think the "mythical man month" argument applies here. We aren't talking about one minor computer project here, we are talking about the core business of Blizzard. It certainly is difficult to hire talent if you need it quickly, but the problem of too slow releases of expansions for Blizzard has been known for years.
If it was impossible to release one expansion per year for a major MMORPG, then how come SOE manages more than one expansion per year for both EQ and EQ2?
If it was impossible to release one expansion per year for a major MMORPG, then how come SOE manages more than one expansion per year for both EQ and EQ2?
It sure would be funny if a polished AoC or WAR went live tomorrow )
As I predicted, 2008 could be a very dry year for mmorpgs; enough to make 2007 look like a flood.
As I predicted, 2008 could be a very dry year for mmorpgs; enough to make 2007 look like a flood.
# posted by : 16/1/08 13:51
: 16/1/08 13:51
If you play WoW I suggest that you give a read to the following article:
Real Flaws in Virtual Worlds
Security researchers Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw poked around in World of Warcraft and other online games, finding vulnerabilities and exploiting the system using online bots and rootkit-like techniques to evade detection. Their adventures in online game security became fodder for the book, Exploiting Online Games. McGraw discussed with securityfocus the state of security in modern video games, cheating and anti-cheating systems, how the market for cheats, exploits, and digital objects is growing, what we could learn from the design of these huge systems, and how game developers react to submissions of security vulnerabilities.
It is eyes-opening.
Real Flaws in Virtual Worlds
Security researchers Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw poked around in World of Warcraft and other online games, finding vulnerabilities and exploiting the system using online bots and rootkit-like techniques to evade detection. Their adventures in online game security became fodder for the book, Exploiting Online Games. McGraw discussed with securityfocus the state of security in modern video games, cheating and anti-cheating systems, how the market for cheats, exploits, and digital objects is growing, what we could learn from the design of these huge systems, and how game developers react to submissions of security vulnerabilities.
It is eyes-opening.
# posted by : 16/1/08 14:13
: 16/1/08 14:13
Gentlemen, the whole game is one large programming exercise, combined with quality graphics and audio(?). Everything is scripted, near enough, and takes design, implementation, Q&A and debugging. All this to a common style guide.
If you had a bunch of code monkeys replicate large sections of the script code for mobs, quests and instances, how fun would the game be to play? How visually repetitive would it be if the graphics designers lacked inspiration and time to polish their artwork, not to mention having the basic skills to make the models and artwork in the first place?
I am sorry, but you just cannot just hire more hands to make work of high quality in the IT business. Most of the time you won't be able to find qualified people. Lots of applicants, sure. But people, who are actually worth a high salary as a graphic designer, story editor or (scripting) programmer, and who can come in from the street and dive right in? Not going to happen, statistically speaking. Anyone you pick up at random like that is only likely to make matters worse, and that is where TMMM enters the picture. Even if a workload can be separated on paper, it still requires central coordination. A task which becomes unmanageable above a certain threshold of complexity.
I would rather suggest being too ambitious as one possible explanation for the delay, perhaps not considering the human resources at hand. Money is unlikely to be the issue here IMHO.
Xyzzy.
If you had a bunch of code monkeys replicate large sections of the script code for mobs, quests and instances, how fun would the game be to play? How visually repetitive would it be if the graphics designers lacked inspiration and time to polish their artwork, not to mention having the basic skills to make the models and artwork in the first place?
I am sorry, but you just cannot just hire more hands to make work of high quality in the IT business. Most of the time you won't be able to find qualified people. Lots of applicants, sure. But people, who are actually worth a high salary as a graphic designer, story editor or (scripting) programmer, and who can come in from the street and dive right in? Not going to happen, statistically speaking. Anyone you pick up at random like that is only likely to make matters worse, and that is where TMMM enters the picture. Even if a workload can be separated on paper, it still requires central coordination. A task which becomes unmanageable above a certain threshold of complexity.
I would rather suggest being too ambitious as one possible explanation for the delay, perhaps not considering the human resources at hand. Money is unlikely to be the issue here IMHO.
Xyzzy.
# posted by : 16/1/08 14:27
: 16/1/08 14:27
As a person who has been in the computer software industry for almost 20 years, in design / engineering, programming, and cert / test / support...
They say around here that sometimes management thinks they can put 9 women in a room and expect a baby in a month... :)
They say around here that sometimes management thinks they can put 9 women in a room and expect a baby in a month... :)
# posted by : 16/1/08 14:38
: 16/1/08 14:38
i cannot believe these ppl defending blizzard by saying programming takes time.. the core of WOW code is already set. there is no new feature, only more-of-the-same-stuff.. more raid more gear more rep. the only thing to do now is content development and it should be able to be scaled with multiple team handling multiple zone and stuff. and for QA to test it.
unless WOLTK add new feature like housing and other horizontal feature.
i have faith that the current WOW dev will do their usual stuff, that is adding more and more of the same instead of adding someting new.
unless WOLTK add new feature like housing and other horizontal feature.
i have faith that the current WOW dev will do their usual stuff, that is adding more and more of the same instead of adding someting new.
# posted by : 16/1/08 15:25
: 16/1/08 15:25
You need to reread the book. The mythical man month proposes that a project that is in -progress cannot be hurried, but rather will be hindered, by adding new programmers who's jobs are intertwined with the existing team. It doesn't apply to the number of developers on board at the start of a project, when there's no catch up to be had. And it doesn't apply if jobs are truly independent. If it applied to the number of programmers at the start of a project, then no OS would ever get delivered. Ever.
Tobold is correct, Blizz could have greatly increased the number of folks involved at the start of development for WoTLK but obviously didn't.
Also, WoW is not an IBM mainframe system. And it's not all complex- coding like the afore-mentioned mainframe. At this point, most of the code is done. The majority of what's being done now is simply content. Blizz developed tools back in 2003 for non-coders to use to add content such as quests. Quest writers jobs are not interdependent with the coders, man-months do work in the quests scenario. Also Artwork, Music, all these things do not apply to mythical man-month theory at all as the jobs are not that intertwined. It's not even programming.
The fact is Blizz is just slow as hell. It's their unique methodology. Always has been. And there's no excuse for it anymore with the resources they have now.
Tobold is correct, Blizz could have greatly increased the number of folks involved at the start of development for WoTLK but obviously didn't.
Also, WoW is not an IBM mainframe system. And it's not all complex- coding like the afore-mentioned mainframe. At this point, most of the code is done. The majority of what's being done now is simply content. Blizz developed tools back in 2003 for non-coders to use to add content such as quests. Quest writers jobs are not interdependent with the coders, man-months do work in the quests scenario. Also Artwork, Music, all these things do not apply to mythical man-month theory at all as the jobs are not that intertwined. It's not even programming.
The fact is Blizz is just slow as hell. It's their unique methodology. Always has been. And there's no excuse for it anymore with the resources they have now.
# posted by : 16/1/08 15:35
: 16/1/08 15:35
I don't think release dates will have a major impact on WotLK. I think WotLK will do well being released prior, or after War.
Either way, War will do very well. Tons of WoW players will flock to War. Very few of these "tons" will actually stop playing WoW altogether, and letting go of their subcription. Blizz will rake in money either way. WotLK will sell millions, however it won't add much to the subscription base.
Although WotLK won't be affected too much by release dates, War may severly be impacted. If War releases slightly after WotLK, when all the WoW players are enjoying the new content, and most likely rushing to level 80, no time for War. Well obviously the above senario would hurt War's initial sales, but I'm sure it will make a come back once WotLK slows down.
Bottom line is that they are both going to be good games. I will buy both, and most likely hold my subscription to WoW no matter what. If War is all that is hyped, I may have a new "main", but I still can't see myself getting rid of WoW for years.
Either way, War will do very well. Tons of WoW players will flock to War. Very few of these "tons" will actually stop playing WoW altogether, and letting go of their subcription. Blizz will rake in money either way. WotLK will sell millions, however it won't add much to the subscription base.
Although WotLK won't be affected too much by release dates, War may severly be impacted. If War releases slightly after WotLK, when all the WoW players are enjoying the new content, and most likely rushing to level 80, no time for War. Well obviously the above senario would hurt War's initial sales, but I'm sure it will make a come back once WotLK slows down.
Bottom line is that they are both going to be good games. I will buy both, and most likely hold my subscription to WoW no matter what. If War is all that is hyped, I may have a new "main", but I still can't see myself getting rid of WoW for years.
Yep... If you're in a hurry and just decide to hire more coders in the middle of the project, then those coders would only slow down the project. That's pretty much common sense, I would imagine. But Blizzard has had months and months (=years) to hire more people and train them to know what the job entails and how to do it well.
# posted by : 16/1/08 15:43
: 16/1/08 15:43
I have to disagree with the notion that Blizzard 'failed their declared goal' of one expansion per year because they didn't release WotLK within the 365 days of TBC. I'm of the camp that pear year is of the calendar year.
Of course, I will say that they've been playing catch up with that since TBC was delayed.
On the other hand, I would definitely *not* like it if the expansions were faster. I like the current system, where smaller sections of content are patched in for free and when we get an official expansion, it's a huge, robust package.
And, of course, there's the fact that *with* that system, I still feel like I have so much to do that if they released WotLK now, I'd miss out on a bunch of stuff I want to accomplish before that happens.
Not being the hardest of hardcore raiders, that's probably going to be the case whenever they release the game - it certainly was for TBC. But right now I'm feeling really optimistic that I can get a couple more alts to 70, clear the raid zones we're learning now and see about how far we can go next. Six-nine months feels *perfect* to me right now.
And keep in mind, I had my first level 70 within 3 weeks of TBC coming out. And yet it still feels like there is SO MUCH to do.
Of course, I will say that they've been playing catch up with that since TBC was delayed.
On the other hand, I would definitely *not* like it if the expansions were faster. I like the current system, where smaller sections of content are patched in for free and when we get an official expansion, it's a huge, robust package.
And, of course, there's the fact that *with* that system, I still feel like I have so much to do that if they released WotLK now, I'd miss out on a bunch of stuff I want to accomplish before that happens.
Not being the hardest of hardcore raiders, that's probably going to be the case whenever they release the game - it certainly was for TBC. But right now I'm feeling really optimistic that I can get a couple more alts to 70, clear the raid zones we're learning now and see about how far we can go next. Six-nine months feels *perfect* to me right now.
And keep in mind, I had my first level 70 within 3 weeks of TBC coming out. And yet it still feels like there is SO MUCH to do.
# posted by : 16/1/08 16:21
: 16/1/08 16:21
I would say scope creep is the real problem.
Look at WOTLK: it looks like an ad for WAR or AoC with all the seige features. I think they see these games coming out and think "we have to have that too"
Look at many of the UI changes they made: guild banks, actually useful minimap with npc and quest indicators, these were things players have been wanting for years, and they only did it after LOTRO came out with these features, as if the sudden competition made them finally implement these. They're even talking about player housing as if it might get done.
It seems they rethought what they wanted to do in WOTLK, which pushed it out. Which is good if their ideas are "let's make the game better", not necessarily good if their ideas are "let's copy everyone". The game seems rather schizo right now, like they're not sure where to go with it.
Look at WOTLK: it looks like an ad for WAR or AoC with all the seige features. I think they see these games coming out and think "we have to have that too"
Look at many of the UI changes they made: guild banks, actually useful minimap with npc and quest indicators, these were things players have been wanting for years, and they only did it after LOTRO came out with these features, as if the sudden competition made them finally implement these. They're even talking about player housing as if it might get done.
It seems they rethought what they wanted to do in WOTLK, which pushed it out. Which is good if their ideas are "let's make the game better", not necessarily good if their ideas are "let's copy everyone". The game seems rather schizo right now, like they're not sure where to go with it.
# posted by : 16/1/08 16:57
: 16/1/08 16:57
I think we are mixing up different issues.
WOTLK the expansion. scope creep affects on the old code are really big things. People who are saying the code is set and writing new code have never had to mess with a big complicated system. The smallest changed can create bugs that take months to find.
However none of that really addresses why someone can't go back and retool items and quests in the old stuff. That is not a development issue. You just need writers and warm bodies to open up the tools and create the quests.
The fact is they could do more to dynamically change existing content.
As far as release dated for expansions. If they rushed them then they'd be breaking the new rule they created, that's killing everyone else. Don't release it till it's polished and fun.
No one will touch them till they accept the new pardigm of Accessiblity for most old computers and the level of polish that is the new standard.
WOTLK the expansion. scope creep affects on the old code are really big things. People who are saying the code is set and writing new code have never had to mess with a big complicated system. The smallest changed can create bugs that take months to find.
However none of that really addresses why someone can't go back and retool items and quests in the old stuff. That is not a development issue. You just need writers and warm bodies to open up the tools and create the quests.
The fact is they could do more to dynamically change existing content.
As far as release dated for expansions. If they rushed them then they'd be breaking the new rule they created, that's killing everyone else. Don't release it till it's polished and fun.
No one will touch them till they accept the new pardigm of Accessiblity for most old computers and the level of polish that is the new standard.
I'll say this. World of Warcraft is the leading mainstream MMO in the world. Who are we to argue that their pace is wrong?
We've already seen faster content and expansion launches from other companies. However, I don't see any of those games with near the amount of players or success that WoW enjoys. Maybe we all need to stop and ask the other companies why they are pushing content so fast?
I can count a half dozen MMORPGs I will never return to because it would be impossible to catch up with all the expansions. However, I can see myself in a few years grabbing WoW again and easily catching up.
Also Tobold, you are completely wrong about raiding. Raiding is up in every category, has been, and will continue to be. It hasn't hit the mass appeal yet, but there is tons of evidence to show that the level 70 end-game is far more successful than level 60.
We've already seen faster content and expansion launches from other companies. However, I don't see any of those games with near the amount of players or success that WoW enjoys. Maybe we all need to stop and ask the other companies why they are pushing content so fast?
I can count a half dozen MMORPGs I will never return to because it would be impossible to catch up with all the expansions. However, I can see myself in a few years grabbing WoW again and easily catching up.
Also Tobold, you are completely wrong about raiding. Raiding is up in every category, has been, and will continue to be. It hasn't hit the mass appeal yet, but there is tons of evidence to show that the level 70 end-game is far more successful than level 60.
I am 95% sure that smurfing != win trading, and the WoW Insider article is just mistaken. In the War3 battle.net days, smurfing was an experienced player making a new account so they could beat up on newbies/keep a high win percentage by discarding longtime accounts to avoid playing at their level. And according to the Wikipedia article WoW Insider links, in general parlance smurfing is breaking down a single huge suspicious activity into many separate smaller instances of that activity so no one catches on. So while I don't doubt that people are calling these arena tactics smurfing, I think that whoever started doing so messed up.
I think that they need to introduce an "easy" intro level 25man raid with the release of WotLK. One that is a real raid, with 4-5 bosses, not just a Gruul's/Mag/Onyxia type encounter.
When you have large guilds all levelling up at the same time, I think it's better to include as many people as possible from the beginning, adding the smaller more customized or difficult raids as needed.
I'd rather play with 25 than 10 any day, assuming equal difficulty.
When you have large guilds all levelling up at the same time, I think it's better to include as many people as possible from the beginning, adding the smaller more customized or difficult raids as needed.
I'd rather play with 25 than 10 any day, assuming equal difficulty.
heartless I'd love some links that show the raiding is doing better than pre BC. Not saying your wrong. I'd just love to see the data.
Sam, I don't have the first link, but before TBC came out, the PARC PlayOn blog ( http://blogs.parc.com/playon/ ) did a study on how many players were active in raiding zones. The number was abysmal, in the 1-3% range. To repeat, approximately ONLY 1-3% of the entire NA/EU playerbase STEPPED FOOT into a raid zone.
We now have WoW Jutsu ( http://www.wowjutsu.com/world/ ) that tracks data directly out of the Armory (a tool not available before TBC).
Entry level raiding like Karazhan enjoys a healthy 97.46% participation rate on WoW Jutsu. What does that mean? Of the 2+ million players tracked by the site, 97% of them have ventured into Kara, killed a boss, and received loot. So, lets round that off to 2 million entry-level raiders.
Assuming that the NA/EU playerbase (which WoW Jutsu tracks) is about 4 million players large, that means that 50% of the player base currently raids and more importantly, HAS SUCCEEDED at raiding (Jutsu does not track people who have not received loot in a raid). An approximate 47% boost in raiding.
Ok, so Kara isn't a "real raid", let's move on to the big stuff. Serpent Shrine Cavern is at 35.66% on Jutsu, or about 750,000 players (18.75% of the playerbase). An increase of 15% over pre-TBC.
You are more than welcome to keep breaking the numbers down.
I don't like to argue numbers at all, but these numbers have been fairly staggering IMHO. I think the trend that happened with TBC is that a lot of former raiders didn't adjust, once again, to changes in TBC and therefore quit and doom-casted WoW's new end-game. What they didn't realize is that Blizzard opened the floodgates to entry-level raid content in a way that many players enjoyed and in doing so the higher level raid content saw an increase in visitors.
Can it get better? Hell yeah, Blizzard still has a long way to go before the raid content can be considered "smooth progression" for the core gamers that play WoW.
We now have WoW Jutsu ( http://www.wowjutsu.com/world/ ) that tracks data directly out of the Armory (a tool not available before TBC).
Entry level raiding like Karazhan enjoys a healthy 97.46% participation rate on WoW Jutsu. What does that mean? Of the 2+ million players tracked by the site, 97% of them have ventured into Kara, killed a boss, and received loot. So, lets round that off to 2 million entry-level raiders.
Assuming that the NA/EU playerbase (which WoW Jutsu tracks) is about 4 million players large, that means that 50% of the player base currently raids and more importantly, HAS SUCCEEDED at raiding (Jutsu does not track people who have not received loot in a raid). An approximate 47% boost in raiding.
Ok, so Kara isn't a "real raid", let's move on to the big stuff. Serpent Shrine Cavern is at 35.66% on Jutsu, or about 750,000 players (18.75% of the playerbase). An increase of 15% over pre-TBC.
You are more than welcome to keep breaking the numbers down.
I don't like to argue numbers at all, but these numbers have been fairly staggering IMHO. I think the trend that happened with TBC is that a lot of former raiders didn't adjust, once again, to changes in TBC and therefore quit and doom-casted WoW's new end-game. What they didn't realize is that Blizzard opened the floodgates to entry-level raid content in a way that many players enjoyed and in doing so the higher level raid content saw an increase in visitors.
Can it get better? Hell yeah, Blizzard still has a long way to go before the raid content can be considered "smooth progression" for the core gamers that play WoW.
Entry level raiding like Karazhan enjoys a healthy 97.46% participation rate on WoW Jutsu. What does that mean? Of the 2+ million players tracked by the site, 97% of them have ventured into Kara, killed a boss, and received loot. So, lets round that off to 2 million entry-level raiders. Assuming that the NA/EU playerbase (which WoW Jutsu tracks) is about 4 million players large, that means that 50% of the player base currently raids and more importantly, HAS SUCCEEDED at raiding (Jutsu does not track people who have not received loot in a raid). An approximate 47% boost in raiding.
That is a very common error. But the 2 million players tracked by WoWJutsu haven't all been to Karazhan. WoWJutsu tracks everyone who is in a guild in which at least one person has succeeded in Karazhan. WoWJutsu really tracks guilds, not characters. There are many large guilds in which only a fraction of the characters are raiding. The real raid participation is much lower than 30%.
Easier exercise is to do a /who 70 snapshot on lets say Friday evening and see how many people are in a raid instance, and how many are in a PvP instance.
That is a very common error. But the 2 million players tracked by WoWJutsu haven't all been to Karazhan. WoWJutsu tracks everyone who is in a guild in which at least one person has succeeded in Karazhan. WoWJutsu really tracks guilds, not characters. There are many large guilds in which only a fraction of the characters are raiding. The real raid participation is much lower than 30%.
Easier exercise is to do a /who 70 snapshot on lets say Friday evening and see how many people are in a raid instance, and how many are in a PvP instance.
"While Blizzard shouldn't have allowed Tigole to belittle them as "welfare epics", fact is that it is now easier to get a nice set of epics from PvP than from PvE raiding."
I'm not sure I'd agree with this. The ease of PvP really depends on your faction and battlegroup. For many Alliance in a crummy Battlegroup, winning BGs, in particular AV, is very difficult. Combine that with the large number of asshats that you have to deal with in PUGs and it can be a very long and painful trip to those PvP epics. I'd say it's much easier to find a semi-decent raiding guild doing Kara/Mag/Gruul/TK/SSC and gear up that way. At the very least it will be less frustrating.
I'm not sure I'd agree with this. The ease of PvP really depends on your faction and battlegroup. For many Alliance in a crummy Battlegroup, winning BGs, in particular AV, is very difficult. Combine that with the large number of asshats that you have to deal with in PUGs and it can be a very long and painful trip to those PvP epics. I'd say it's much easier to find a semi-decent raiding guild doing Kara/Mag/Gruul/TK/SSC and gear up that way. At the very least it will be less frustrating.
# posted by : 17/1/08 23:58
: 17/1/08 23:58
Tobold, I believe you are mistaken. Jutsu tracks RANKED members of guilds, and a player is only ranked AFTER receiving loot from a raid and equipping it. That is 2.3 million players that have looted and equipped something from a raid. All information available in the site's FAQ.
I will have to wait for an e-mail back from Jutsu's operator to confirm what the Instance Statistics % counts, guilds or players.
I can count the number of guilds on Azgalor that were in MC and above on one hand from pre-TBC. Everyone I know that plays regularly, has attempted Kara at some point and I know many casual player groups that have beaten Kara and teamed up with other casual groups to attempt SSC and above. That is something I never saw pre-TBC until Zul'Gurrub and AQ 20 hit. ZG and AQ 20 are the reason Kara was built and shows that Blizzard is learning.
I will have to wait for an e-mail back from Jutsu's operator to confirm what the Instance Statistics % counts, guilds or players.
I can count the number of guilds on Azgalor that were in MC and above on one hand from pre-TBC. Everyone I know that plays regularly, has attempted Kara at some point and I know many casual player groups that have beaten Kara and teamed up with other casual groups to attempt SSC and above. That is something I never saw pre-TBC until Zul'Gurrub and AQ 20 hit. ZG and AQ 20 are the reason Kara was built and shows that Blizzard is learning.
That is 2.3 million players that have looted and equipped something from a raid.
It is not players it is characters. This is a very important distinction.
My own observations are players that raid have more level 70 characters and for the easier raids they will go in with each of their 70s. This greatly reduces the number of players as opposed to characters raiding.
It is not players it is characters. This is a very important distinction.
My own observations are players that raid have more level 70 characters and for the easier raids they will go in with each of their 70s. This greatly reduces the number of players as opposed to characters raiding.
# posted by : 18/1/08 17:41
: 18/1/08 17:41
I don't know heartless. I've had toons on several servers and I really have a hard time believing 2.3 million accounts have raiding time. now I do believe 2.3 million toons have raid gear. But a lot of them are inactive and a lot of them are owned by the same players.
I've been in 3 raid guilds and every single guild had accounts from people who quit the game that were being kept active so we had an extra healer,tank or warlock.
I know a lot of people who play wow and most of them haven't raided and only 2 or 3 of them have gone past karazhan.
My experience may not be a good sample but I think BC raiding has just drawn a sharp line between the people with time and the people without.
I didn't think it would be this way but IMHO 40 man raids ended up being the best option for casual raiders. Once the hard core guilds mapped out the strategies then the less hard core guilds could do the raids and had more room for slack to take friends or guildies who didn't have the time to be hard core and farm for gear and mats and still have a reasonable expectation of advancement.
In BC the curve is much higher and those people in the middle really get screwed.
I've been in 3 raid guilds and every single guild had accounts from people who quit the game that were being kept active so we had an extra healer,tank or warlock.
I know a lot of people who play wow and most of them haven't raided and only 2 or 3 of them have gone past karazhan.
My experience may not be a good sample but I think BC raiding has just drawn a sharp line between the people with time and the people without.
I didn't think it would be this way but IMHO 40 man raids ended up being the best option for casual raiders. Once the hard core guilds mapped out the strategies then the less hard core guilds could do the raids and had more room for slack to take friends or guildies who didn't have the time to be hard core and farm for gear and mats and still have a reasonable expectation of advancement.
In BC the curve is much higher and those people in the middle really get screwed.
Wowjutzu suffers shortcomings in many areas:
- The Armory is notoriously unstable and out-of-date
- There is no way to tell if a toon is active
- There is no way to track by account rather than by toon
- Drops that are D/E-ed can't be tracked
- Recipes that are dropped aren't tracked
- Mats that drop (such as nether vortex) aren't tracked
- Reputation could probably be utilized (Violet Eye, etc.), but is not currently used
- Historical data for comparison between WoW 1.0 and 2.0 isn't there
...and probably other factors I've overlooked.
But I don't really see all of that as a big deal. I'm really glad that there is a full-clear raiding guild in my faction on my server, because it helps the in-game economy. Other than that, it really doesn't matter much to me. If I *really* wanted to see everything in WoW, I could. But I just don't want to give up enough RL to do it; I don't enjoy raiding that much.
- The Armory is notoriously unstable and out-of-date
- There is no way to tell if a toon is active
- There is no way to track by account rather than by toon
- Drops that are D/E-ed can't be tracked
- Recipes that are dropped aren't tracked
- Mats that drop (such as nether vortex) aren't tracked
- Reputation could probably be utilized (Violet Eye, etc.), but is not currently used
- Historical data for comparison between WoW 1.0 and 2.0 isn't there
...and probably other factors I've overlooked.
But I don't really see all of that as a big deal. I'm really glad that there is a full-clear raiding guild in my faction on my server, because it helps the in-game economy. Other than that, it really doesn't matter much to me. If I *really* wanted to see everything in WoW, I could. But I just don't want to give up enough RL to do it; I don't enjoy raiding that much.
# posted by : 18/1/08 19:34
: 18/1/08 19:34
The Armory is not notoriously out of date and I'm not sure why so many people believe that. Updates for the Armory have been fairly good since the second version was released. My character has always updated within 24 hours and when I canceled, my character was moved off the Armory within a few hours.
But for a second lets assume all your negatives are right. Then we can draw even more conclusions that there are TONS of players being missed by Jutsu and the raid participation is EVEN HIGHER.
Next, determining if a player is active has no point in this discussion. The debate was whether TBC or pre-TBC raiding had a higher participation rate. Participation is participation and Jutsu tracks it correctly.
Historical data is available from the PARC PlayOn blog and WarcraftRealms.com has plenty of historical data stored away. I've already asked Rollie if he can do some analysis between his stuff and the armory.
The only error I made was in stating players instead of characters. However, I highly doubt it skews the numbers as dramatically as you state. I would actually put the number of "secondary" account swithin the margin of error ( +/- 5% ).
It's even funny people would argue that at the same time stating that it takes so much time and effort to do raids. If it really was such a monumental task to raid, as is being stated, people would not have time to do it on multiple accounts.
Raiding is more accessible in TBC and I would wager Tobold's own posts show it as he is participating in raiding even as he admits to playing a far more casual way since his return to WoW.
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But for a second lets assume all your negatives are right. Then we can draw even more conclusions that there are TONS of players being missed by Jutsu and the raid participation is EVEN HIGHER.
Next, determining if a player is active has no point in this discussion. The debate was whether TBC or pre-TBC raiding had a higher participation rate. Participation is participation and Jutsu tracks it correctly.
Historical data is available from the PARC PlayOn blog and WarcraftRealms.com has plenty of historical data stored away. I've already asked Rollie if he can do some analysis between his stuff and the armory.
The only error I made was in stating players instead of characters. However, I highly doubt it skews the numbers as dramatically as you state. I would actually put the number of "secondary" account swithin the margin of error ( +/- 5% ).
It's even funny people would argue that at the same time stating that it takes so much time and effort to do raids. If it really was such a monumental task to raid, as is being stated, people would not have time to do it on multiple accounts.
Raiding is more accessible in TBC and I would wager Tobold's own posts show it as he is participating in raiding even as he admits to playing a far more casual way since his return to WoW.
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